David Wright tells The Post about his special Mets career

David Wright, who is set to enter the Mets Hall of Fame and have his No. 5 retired by the franchise Saturday, sat down for some Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby. 

Q: That moment when (then-manager) Mickey Callaway removed you before the fifth inning of your farewell game. 

A: I think the first thing that came to my mind was: This’ll be the last time I ever put on a baseball uniform as a baseball player. And that hit me hard because, to that point, it’s what I loved to do. When people ask, “What are your hobbies?” mine were simple: play baseball, practice baseball. So I think, at the moment, 30 years of baseball memories start just flashing in your mind as you’re walking off the field for the last time. I’m not an emotional person to begin with; it hit me like a ton of bricks, in that you lived your life a certain way to try to become the best baseball player possible, and it comes to an end instantaneously. And, for me, it was just the reality of the situation of I’m no longer going to be a baseball player. And that was difficult for me. 

Q: And when you went into the clubhouse and you had to hang up No. 5 for the last time? 

A: The best man at my wedding was Dave Racaniello, the bullpen catcher. And, those last few months, it reminds me a lot of my wife where she’s always taking pictures on a cellphone. I’m not a picture taker … but he’s always taking these random pictures of me doing stuff the last few months, and [I] come to find out he was making a scrapbook for me reminiscing about our favorite spots to eat on the road, some of the plane rides playing cards, lunch with [Jacob] deGrom, the stuff that we used to do on a consistent basis. And he was there taking pictures, and I remember sitting down in my chair, and he was there, and deGrom was there — some of my real close inner circle — and I remember taking my cleats off and thinking, like we just talked about, “This’ll be the last time that I take my spikes off.” It’s just these little things that hit the hardest. Like, I will never wear another pair of baseball spikes probably in my life. I read a book about the All Blacks, the rugby team, and after I read that book, about how they appreciate and had the respect that they have for the uniform — this was years ago — I always would take my uniform, I’d never let it touch the floor; I’d always hang it over the laundry cart, or I’d hang it on the back of my chair. I wouldn’t just throw it on the floor for laundry; I’d always try to treat it with respect. And I remember taking it off that last time, and almost giving it, like, an inner thank you for treating me so well and just the respect that I have for those colors and that organization and that city. 

Q: Do you remember the drive home? 

A: I remember being in the clubhouse really, really late. I remember kind of sitting in my chair, just kind of reminiscing a little bit. And I remember going to my car, and there was a line wrapped around the players’ parking lot of people cheering and hollering, and I remember taking pictures and signing autographs for probably 30, 45 minutes. This had to have been ’cause the game went forever, this had to have been after midnight. And then from there, I had a bunch of friends and family in town that were gonna go have pizza and some drinks at Foley’s in the city, so I met them there. We ordered a ton of pizza and hung out for an hour and then went home. So I don’t remember the car ride, but I remember leaving the stadium with all the fans that stuck around to give me one last sendoff. 

Q: How long did it take you to fill the void? 

A: I knew I wanted to have kids, but I didn’t want to miss a lot of the stuff that I saw a lot of the other guys miss. … I had a 2-year-old and a newborn, and that quickly filled the void of baseball; just the amount of attention and the little dad stuff that I got a chance to do after baseball filled the void time-wise a little bit and passion-wise. But what I was missing was working at something to get better … like practicing, like grinding at something for a specific end result. And that’s kind of the thing that I miss the most is not being in the foxhole during the good times and the bad times, not putting in the work in the batting cage to see concrete results … you know, that feeling you get when … [a] pitcher makes a good pitch and you get a hit off of him, and you could see the look of dejection in the pitcher’s face that you won that little small battle. Those are the things that, if you’re asking what I miss the most about it, that’s what I miss the most about it. 

Q: Describe the personality of [your 8-year-old daughter] Olivia Shea. 

A: She’s a carbon copy of my wife. Incredibly girly, into fashion … doesn’t like to sweat, doesn’t like to get dirty, doesn’t really like to compete. Likes to be around her friends. Very social. 

Q: Describe the personality of [your 6-year-old daughter] Madison. 

A: She’s more of a miniature me. She likes to get dirty; she likes to practice. She will do anything to win (soccer and softball). 

This is the best way to explain it: Right after a game’s over, Olivia’s first question is, “Can we go get ice cream?” win or lose. And “Yes, we can.” Madison’s first question is, “Did we win and by how many?” 

Q: And the personality of Brooks Wright? 

A: He is a combination of both of ours. Looks — thank God — looks more like my wife, but acts more like me. He is a baseball and sports nut. We took him to a water park, and it was about an hour away. And he goes, “Daddy, how do you spell ‘baseball?’ ” And he’s 4 years old, and he’s on his iPad in the back of the car. And I spelled “baseball” for him. And a couple of minutes later, he asked my wife, “Mommy, how do you spell ‘highlights?’ ” And she spells “highlight,” and he’s googling “baseball highlights” on his iPad because he wants to watch — more so the Mets — like the highlights from the day before. But all he wants to do is go play catch, he wants to go to the batting cages, he wants to shoot baskets, which is a good thing. He wants very little to do with TV and his iPad; he wants everything to do with participating and playing in sports. 

Q: What if, down the road, he says to you, “Daddy, I want to be a Yankees, Braves or Phillies fan?” 

A: He knows that is an automatic exemption out of the will. 

Q: Does he have a favorite Mets player now? 

A: He would say Francisco Lindor. 

Q: He bats left, throws right. 

A: He bats left, throws right. 

Q: You take him to batting cages? 

A: I bought a membership to (chuckle) a Dodgers training facility, and you buy a monthly membership and you can use the batting cages as much as you want. My son always wears Mets stuff, and they give him a hard time, and he fires right back at ’em, so it’s a fun back and forth. So we’re up there probably once or twice a week, for sure, and we always start out the same. He wants to play catch first, which we do in our backyard, but he likes doing it there, also. And then, he likes to play first base, so then I have to roll him grounders, and then he likes to try to stretch and catch it while touching home plate like a first baseman, so we do that. And then, this year he played coach-pitch, so I would flip balls to him for batting practice. But this year, he goes to, it’s like a machine pitch, so we have one of the machines that we’ve been practicing on now for fall baseball off the machine, so that’s probably once or twice a week. And then, it’s every day that we go out in the backyard and play some sort of catch or Wiffle Ball or something. I don’t push it. He comes to me and asks for it, and I will oblige any chance I get because I love taking him, but the kid is a baseball rat. 

Q: Does he watch David Wright highlights? 

A: Sort of; kind of. Breakfast the next day, we always watch the two- or three-minute highlights from the night before. And then, every once in a while, when I put him to bed — I usually put my son to bed and my wife puts the two girls to bed — we sing two songs: One is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and the other is “Meet the Mets.” And then we will watch either highlight videos that my wife took of him during his baseball game that week, or he’ll say, “I want to see Daddy hit a home run.” So then we’ll watch one of the home runs that I hit. 

Q: Describe [your wife] Molly. 

A: She’s the captain of our household; domestic engineer; incredibly loving mother; and couldn’t ask for a better wife. Both of us, the Ubers to the practices, we got three kids playing three different sports at any time of the year. You wouldn’t find a better mother and wife to our three knuckleheads, and she probably would say that she’s got four kids — including me. 

Q: How did you feel emotionally when Jose Reyes had to leave the Mets? 

A: At that point, I had lost a lot of close friends through free agency or trades, but Jose hit really hard because I remember the day that Guy Conti, our field coordinator down in Port St. Lucie in the minor leagues, called a 17-year-old Jose Reyes and an 18-year-old David Wright into his office and told us that we were gonna be the future of the left side of the infield of the New York Mets, and that conversation kind of bonded us from that point moving forward. We would have liked to have accomplished a heckuva lot more winning-wise in our careers, but I’ll never forget the day that Guy called us into his office, told us that, and we kind of looked at each other, and it couldn’t have been two more different people. … You have a kid from Virginia that listens to rock and country, and eats hamburgers and hot dogs and speaks English, and then you have Jose Reyes from the Dominican Republic, listens to reggaeton, eats stuff that I wouldn’t eat. … It just culturally couldn’t be more different. But then, after that conversation in the office with Guy Conti, we came together to almost wanting to prove Guy Conti right. And we had a bond since then and into this day. 

Q: What was it like having him as your shortstop? 

A: It made my job a heckuva lot easier. We fed off of each other. I knew where he liked to play; I knew his strengths and weaknesses, and he knew mine. So I knew that I could play a certain position, and even if it was a little out of position, Jose could pick me up with his range and the way he covered ground, so he made me look good defensively. He made me look really good offensively because it’s a lot easier to hit with a man on third with one out. Jose would hit a single, steal second, steal third, and all of a sudden I got a cheap RBI because of Jose Reyes. 

Q: Did he teach you Spanish? 

A: He tried (laugh). Put it this way: I learned probably more of the bad words from Jose Reyes in one year playing with him than I learned of three years of high school Spanish. I tried because I really wanted to be able to communicate and get to know. … That’s why I’d go to the Dominican Republic every three years to visit Jose, and I went out and hung out with Pedro [Martinez] and Moises Alou and some of the guys that I played with because I wanted them to feel like we were pulling the rope in the same direction; that even though I didn’t speak the language or even though I didn’t like the foods that they liked or liked the music that they liked, that I wanted to be a great teammate and almost like a brother-type to these guys. So I wanted to learn Spanish; I wanted to visit their hometowns to be able to get to know them on a level greater than being in the clubhouse. 

Q: Whatever comes to mind: Shannon Forde. 

A: A big sister. The relationship organically started as kind of a censor. Jay [Horwitz] would come up and say something, and Shannon would come put it in terms that I would more understand (laugh), and kind of teach me the ropes of community relations, public relations — coming from Virginia to New York. But then it grew into a friendship and a mentorship where she was protective like an older sister and would help me in anything; not just in the clubhouse, but away from the clubhouse as well. She could tell that I wanted to appease everybody. And then it was, she took it upon herself to kind of teach me the value of time management and sometimes saying no. I think she did that for everybody, but I’d like to think she took an extra liking to me. 

Q: Tony Carullo. 

A: The best. Anytime I come to the ballpark and was having a tough day or rough morning, or you’re in one of those moods, any chance I’d get to hang around Tony completely changed that, and I got a chance to smile and laugh. And the way he appreciates just being around people and the way people are drawn to him is second to none. 

Q: What would you tell Mets fans about Jay Horwitz? 

A: For one, I’ve never met somebody more passionate about the New York Mets than Jay Horwitz. That’s not in the blinders of P.R. in general; this man has devoted the majority, basically his entire life, to this organization. He lives and dies by every win and loss … and he treats the players like they’re his sons. The passion that he has for the New York Mets and the love that he has for the New York Mets … nobody has a greater passion or love than him. 

Q: Why did you have such a bond with Dave Racaniello? 

A: I think we were relatively the same age, and I don’t think I have a ton of qualities that translate fantastically into real life. I can hit a baseball, I can catch a baseball, but when it comes to real life, one of the great things that I was given by my dad being a police officer was I can look into somebody’s eyes and see if there’s some sort of ulterior motive or if they’re honest. … I can tell somebody’s character fairly early on from meeting them, and Rac and I vibed immediately. He was the best man at my wedding, and we’ve become incredibly close ever since. I married a Southern California girl, him and his fiancée a couple of years ago moved to 20 or 25 minutes from where we live, so I get a chance to see him a lot during the offseason. It still makes me feel like I’m part of the team talking shop with him. He’ll call after a tough stretch, and, “Did you watch the game?” I’ll say, “No, tell me about it,” and we’ll just go over some of the stuff, and it kind of gets me fired up like I used to do when I played. 

Q: Art Zaske (Tom Seaver son-in-law). 

A: It’s one of those things where I was so lucky to get to know Mr. Seaver, and for him for whatever reason take a liking to me and to go out of his way to teach me not only about baseball, but about life away from baseball ’cause, as a 21-year-old, for me it was baseball 24 hours a day, seven days a week; what can I do to get better? I had a bad game; I’m gonna go home and just think about it for the rest of the night. And Mr. Seaver, I don’t think he was incredibly successful, but he started talking to me about doing things away from the game that would get your mind away from good games and bad games because, regardless, you gotta wake up the next day and go out there and perform if you had a good day or a bad day the day before. And then, through that, I got a chance to know a lot of the Seaver family. So when there’s a passing in the family, or if something big happens in the family, one of my biggest regrets is not taking up. … Mr. Seaver would come up to me, “You gotta come out and visit me at the vineyard.” And I didn’t know anything about wine; I didn’t drink wine when I was younger. I would always kind of … would not blow him off, but I’d always find a reason to not go. And I wish I would’ve taken him up on that and get a chance to go spend a couple of days with Mr. Seaver and the family and walk through the vineyards and kind of get a chance to know him on that level. When my wife and I have a big occasion and we celebrate a birthday or anniversary, I’ve been fortunate enough where I’ve been gifted some of the Seaver wine, but I buy the Seaver wine for those special occasions to remember the impact Mr. Seaver had on me in general. 

Q: Describe your dad. 

A: My dad is a disciplinarian; a blue-collar, bring-your-lunchpail-to-work type guy that has accomplished getting to where he’s gotten, becoming assistant chief in a police department in Norfolk, through hard work and determination, that there’s no shortcuts to having success. 

Q: And your mother? 

A: My mother is kind of the yin to the yang where she’s the emotional support, the sweetheart, nurturing … when we get in trouble with our dad, we go find our moms to be coddled a little bit, so it was a perfect balance of growing up in a disciplined household with a police officer father and then, when we get in trouble from our dad, go find our mom to get loved up a little bit. 

Q: Describe, if you could, your eating contests with your brothers. 

A: (Laugh) I credit them for unknowingly making me as competitive as I am today because growing up in a household with four boys, we’re all three years apart — I was the oldest — so me and my youngest brother, Daniel, we would always team up against the two middles. So no matter what it was, we’d compete at everything: basketball, compete; ping-pong, compete; wrestling, compete. And my mom would order a pizza and, say there was X number of slices, it’s who could eat the most slices ’cause my mom wouldn’t let us get a second slice till we finished the first slice. So it’d be like, “OK, game on.” Bang, who could eat the fastest one to get the second one; who could eat the second one the fastest to get the third one; and it’s who could eat the most pizza? 

Q: Dinner at the White House. 

A: The coolest off-field perk or honor that I’ve ever had — I got to share it with my dad — I got a chance to see the former president [George W. Bush] at Augusta a few years back, and I was like, “I know you get this all the time, but you don’t know how gracious you were,” and then he remembered, and he remembered my name, and we started talking baseball. One of the most prominent displays I have in my office is the menu; we all signed the menu, all the invites and the president and the First Lady [Laura Bush] signed the menu. And then we got a chance to take a picture with the president, so it’s the president, the First Lady, me and my dad on a big picture. 

Q: What was the main course? 

A: Something that I was completely unfamiliar with; I believe it was lamb. And I’m not much of a lamb person, but I wolfed it down, and it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten. I’m not sure if I’ve eaten lamb since. 

Q: New York Post deputy sports editor Mark Hale covered your Mets for three years. 

A: I’ve seen some pictures of Mark recently, and he looks the exact same, so I need the secret for the anti-aging whatever he’s using. 

Q: The Battle of the Badges (police versus firemen) next month. 

A: My dad being a police officer was something that I jumped at the opportunity to be the commissioner of this game each year. I have a lot of fun with it. These guys play, I would say, ‘A’ baseball, but they have ‘A-plus’ trash talking. I wish I would have had some of their material from when I played ’cause I certainly would have used it. It’s one of the days that I circle on my calendar each year that I look forward to heading back to New York, just being around the real heroes of the community. 

Q: Eli Manning. 

A: Just a gamer. A guy that, even though it’s a different sport, that I tried to study and learn from. I loved the way he went out there and competed. A winner; even when it didn’t seem like he had his best stuff, he found ways to win. 

Q: Your thoughts on him as a Hall of Famer? 

A: I hope so. For me, it’s no question, I think the track record speaks for itself, and then just what he was able to do as a leader and a winner, especially in those Super Bowl games, for me, it’s a no-doubter. 

Q: How well did you get to know Derek Jeter? 

A: Fairly well. I knew him mostly though charity work and different charity functions up until the World Baseball Classic, when I got to know him on a more personal level, and I was like a puppy dog to him. I was like his shadow; all I wanted to do was be around him to learn and to bounce ideas and questions off of, and I’m not sure he would admit it, but I’m pretty sure he got tired of me. … If he wasn’t playing, and he was up at the top step, I’d go stand right next to him just to see if I could pick up things. I remember following him to the batting cages during a meaningless spring training game where we were getting ready for the World Baseball Classic. I wanted to see his routine in the batting cage; I wanted to see how he prepared for a game, and I would literally shadow him as much as I possibly could. 

Q: Favorite home run? 

A: That World Series in Game 3 coming back to New York at Citi Field in 2015. 

Q: Favorite Mets moment. 

A: All-time, for me, was the Mike Piazza home run after 9/11. For me, personally, my I-made-it moment was I walked off Mariano [Rivera] in 2006. My parents’ flight got delayed from Virginia, so they got in their seats like in the sixth or seventh inning; they saw me strike out. And then the next at-bat was the Mariano at-bat. I got a chance to battle the Greatest of All Time, and to beat him on that one at-bat gave me so much confidence moving forward. 

Q: The best Mets team you played on. 

A: If you could combine ’06 and ’15, I think that would be a pretty dynamic team. Selfishly, for me, ’06 because we were an offensive juggernaut, and it was so much fun coming to the ballpark every day because we had the ability to throw up 10 runs for fun. The 2015 team was more built around our pitching, so if you could take that pitching staff, combine it with the hitters from ’06, I think that’d be a pretty good start. 

Q: Coming so close to winning a World Series. 

A: I would trade any and every All-Star appearance, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove, for that ring. I learned at a young age how New York really remembers players, and they really, really cherish and remember the winning players. So more than anything, I wanted to get one of those rings. Fell just short, so that’s a tremendous regret. I’m not sure if there’s anything I could go back and say, “I wish I could do this different to get that done.” But certainly, [it’s] something that eats at me, not being able to finish that job. 

Q: The current Mets. 

A: It’s fun to watch … to be able to build a team that Steve and Alex Cohen have built, to add a David Stearns making kind of the day-to-day decisions, it’s an incredible team to watch. They hit a wall, but they can beat you in so many different ways, especially once they get healthy with their pitching staff. You got some top-of-the-line arms that have yet to really throw substantial innings this year. 

Q: Your reaction when Juan Soto left the Yankees to come to the Mets. 

A: If I was looking at this in Juan Soto’s eyes — which I’m obviously not — what an exciting and fun and great atmosphere and climate to build up the New York Mets into what the Yankees have been for so many years. I don’t think it’s any secret that, for a lot of the time, the Mets were viewed as kind of The Little Brothers of New York. What a great opportunity for Juan Soto and any other free agent to come to the New York Mets to try to build that type of legacy and that type of tradition and that type of history that the crosstown Yankees have. And I’m not saying we’ll ever get there. It’s not to diminish what the Yankees have accomplished there, the respect that they’ve earned is all-world. But what a fun challenge, and you want to talk about the history remembering winners and game-changers … to be able to change the kind of the course of the New York Mets, that evolution to make them a perennial winner, you’d cement your legacy in the history of New York sports. 

Q: Do you enjoy watching Soto in the batter’s box? 

A: I liked to walk, and I feel like I drew my fair share of walks, but his plate discipline is second to none. I wish I had that set of eyeballs to be able to determine … a lot of times, if that thing was close, I was swinging. And he can determine a fraction of an inch here, a fraction of an inch there, and it’s just a skill set that, obviously, nobody else has. I wish I had that balance of power to be able to hit for average, to be able to hit to all fields. And then on top of that, when you’re not feeling good at the plate, you’re gonna be able to work those walks and to distinguish what’s a half an inch outside or a half an inch inside is just on a completely different level. 

Q: Pete Alonso is on the verge of breaking Darryl Strawberry’s all-time Mets home run record. 

A: I don’t follow the overall game as close as I did when I played, but his raw power is just insane. I can’t think of another player — I mean, Aaron Judge — but with more raw power than Pete Alonso. He makes Citi Field look so small. It’s a great pitchers’ park, and he makes it look like a Little League field. I’ve been on the field when he takes his batting practice, and the ball just makes a different sound off of his bat. It’s just coming out so much hotter and the sound is just so much different than pretty much any other hitter in baseball. 

Q: He decided not to participate in the All-Star Game Home Run Derby. 

A: I respect the decision because I competed — not nearly as successful as he did — but I competed in two of those, and it wears you out physically. So to be able to just focus on that All-Star Game and not have to prepare for the Home Run Derby and then take all those swings and take all the extra swings in between the rounds, I think will do his body some good for the second half. 

Q: Do you ever dream about the Hall of Fame? 

A: I drive by my high school and I drive by my Little League field every so often, and I’ll catch myself like looking over at the Little League field, and I’d be like, “What if you would have told 10-year-old me that we’d be having this discussion right now about being on the Hall of Fame ballot? I would have laughed, and I also have got a good chuckle out of that and told you, you were crazy. It’s just an honor to be on the ballot, to be able to survive those two ballots, but I don’t think too much of it. I would have thought about it more had I been able to finish my career the way I wanted to finish it. And I’m not complaining because had I had the opportunity to do everything over again, there’s nothing I would have changed. But it would have been a cool conversation to have had I been able to finish out those last two, three, four years. 

Q: By the way, how is your back these days? 

A: It’s good and bad. I had a procedure done about a year-and-a-half ago that should make me feel halfway decent for the foreseeable future. There’s probably one more down the road that I’ll need. It’s weird because I’m very routine-oriented. So, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed, I pretty much have an idea of scheduling what I’m gonna do that day. I always make time — typically, it’s in the morning — where I do my back stuff; I do my stuff to make sure that I’m doing what I can physically to not make my back hurt. But I can stick to that routine religiously: Do it every day, do exactly how I plan to do it, and then just randomly one day, it’ll flare up, and you have these difficulties bending over to tie your shoe. The hard part for me is kind of the mystery of the day-to-day and not knowing, even though I prepare to feel good the next day, not feeling good. Mentally, it’s challenging. 

Q: Do you ever think back to your collision with Carlos Lee? 

A: Probably more so now because I’m reminded fairly often (chuckle) that I’ll get some back pain and that makes me remember it more often than I’d like to. 

Q: What do you remember about it exactly? 

A: I remember feeling a great sense of pride in being at the right spot at the right time because that’s a broken play that you don’t practice, you just have to have a sixth sense on the baseball field where the ball might end up. So I’m catching the ball as a third baseman in shallow left field, and then it’s just a footrace to third. And, the way I played the game, and coaches have tried to talk to me about it — my agents (chuckle) have tried to talk to me about it — is that, if there was an out to be made, that I try to make the out, whether it’s diving in the stands, whether it’s diving at Carlos Lee. So I remember feeling this great sense of pride in being in the right spot at the right time, and that I had this sense about where the ball was gonna end up, that I’m there. Then, all of a sudden, it’s this footrace with this — they don’t call him what translates into “The Horse” [El Caballo] for no reason. So then, we have this collision at third. I’m feeling pretty good about getting the out. I remember him getting up and being hurt a little bit, and I’m like, “Oh, wow, maybe he’s not so big after all,” that I got the better of that collision. And then after a few seconds of getting up after the adrenaline wore off, I was like, “Something’s not right.” It took about a month for me to actually tell a trainer that my back was killing me. But I could tell within a few seconds after getting up from that collision that something was wrong with my back. 

Q: What was the emotional low point for you during your exhaustive rehab, and did you ever think about just walking away? 

A: I never thought about walking away, but I remember calling my dad — and again, I’m not an overly emotional person, which I think could be argued based on I was in tears in my last game. I remember driving to the ballpark for one of my rehabs. I started doing baseball stuff after I hurt my back, and I remember driving to the ballpark, and I couldn’t sit in the car because my back was hurting so bad, like I was driving with my back as straight as I could, like with my head almost on the passenger side seat trying to get to a spot where I was comfortable enough to drive to the ballpark, and it was a 5-minute drive from my house in St. Lucie to the ballpark for the rehab. And I remember that day thinking to myself, “This doesn’t bode well for my future in baseball if I can’t sit comfortably in a car and drive to the ballpark for my physical therapy.” And I remember calling my dad, and I’m sure he could tell by my voice that I was incredibly concerned, and it was just one of those father-son conversations where it’s like, “You gotta stick to the plan. Your doctor says you gotta do this, the rehab says you gotta do this,” but it was more so on an emotional support level to where he knew kind of what I was looking for, that I needed some sort of positivity that he provided. But I remember that being a fairly low point, when I was having a hard time tying my shoes, I was having a hard time getting in a car and driving a short distance to go do my physical therapy ’cause my back hurt so bad. I would probably say looking back on it, for me, that was probably kind of the beginning of the end. 

Q: What was the origin of No. 5? 

A: No. 5 was given to me by Charlie Samuels, my first clubhouse manager. They gave me No. 5 when I got called up from Double-A to Triple-A in Norfolk, and I just thought it was just because that was what’s available, and [I] come to find out when I flew in to LaGuardia [Airport] and then Shea Stadium, No. 5 in snow whites were waiting for me when I got to the clubhouse. And then, down the road, I finally asked Charlie Samuels, “Why did you choose No. 5 for me?” And he said because of George Brett and Brooks Robinson. 

Q: When you were called up, who told you? 

A: The “Bad Dude,” John Stearns, was my manager in Triple-A, and there had been a lot of discussion. … I got off to a great start in Double-A that year, 2004, and [Ken] Oberkfell and Howard Johnson were my coaches there. So after two months, and then “HoJo” called me in the office to talk to me about this, was that there was a debate between leaving me at Double-A for however long it took until I got called up, or moving me to Triple-A for however long it took to get me called up. And HoJo’s argument was I was having success, I was incredibly familiar and close with both coaches, and that he thought it was best for my development to just leave me at Double-A and call me up to the big leagues straight from Double-A whenever that were to happen. There was some sentiment in the organization that it’d be good for me to go experience Triple-A for a lot of reasons, some of them being that it’s guys that played in the big leagues. For me it was managing time because [Norfolk is] my hometown, managing ticket requests, managing what small media requests there are … learning the time-management aspect of being a big leaguer. And selfishly, I wanted to go to Triple-A. I loved HoJo, I loved Ken Oberkfell, but I want to go to Triple-A because I grew up going to those games as a kid, so it would be a cool full-circle moment for me. Long story short: We had just played the Durham Bulls, which was B.J. [Upton’s team], one of my close friends who I grew up with, he was in Triple-A at the time. So it was kind of a big deal in my area, both of us coming home and playing in Norfolk. Nothing happened after the game; I ate, showered, got a workout, whatever, and then right before I was about to leave, John Stearns calls me in the office, and he did this periodically to check in on things I was doing well, things I could work on, so I didn’t think anything of it. So I go into the office, and he sits down, and we started just BSing a little bit. And he looks at me with this big smile … and I could tell he was just small-talking me. And he looks at me with this big smile, and told me I was going to the big leagues. And it was a really, really, really, really cool moment. 

Q: Do you remember flying over Shea Stadium when you got the call-up? 

A: Like it was yesterday. 

Q: What do you remember thinking at that moment? 

A: So, it was my second time ever in New York. The first was to sign out of the draft when I was 18 years old. So the second time was flying over LaGuardia when I knew that I was gonna be in the starting lineup that night against the Montreal Expos. It’s a surreal feeling in accomplishing the lifelong goal of every 5- to 10-year-old kid in the country. But right after this incredible sense of satisfaction, reality hits in, and you realize it’s just a beginning, and now you have to solidify yourself as a starter and then, hopefully, become a middle-of-the-lineup type producer … and then, maybe, an All-Star-caliber player; and then, maybe, a couple of All-Star Games. It’s this weird kind of hamster wheel of emotions as you’re flying over Shea Stadium that I’ve accomplished this incredibly difficult goal of making it to the major leagues, but when you think about it, it really is just a start. 

Q: What are you most proud of about your career? 

A: I would say that I reached my ceiling, and I don’t think a lot of players can say that: That I got the most out of my God-given ability; I got the most out of my body, like the work ethic that I brought to the table. … I just got the most out of what I was given. And I think that, to me, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I felt like I checked off all the boxes, and I truly gave the game everything that I had and that I reached as good of a player as I possibly could have been given the ability that I had. 

Q: What does it mean to you that you played with one team your entire career? 

A: I saw it firsthand for all those years with the Braves with Chipper Jones, and I remember the last few years of Chipper Jones in Atlanta thinking to myself like, “That’s cool; that’s what I want.” Winning anywhere else — for me, having been drafted, developed, the Mets giving me my first opportunity — just wouldn’t have meant a fraction of what it would have meant chasing that championship for the Mets. That loyalty worked both ways, but through and through, I am a New York Met. I said it a million times, I’ll say it again: I genuinely feel like I bleed orange and blue, and I love that feeling. I couldn’t imagine suiting up for anybody else. 

Q: Biggest regret? 

A: Biggest regret, for me, would have been I wish — and this goes against everything I believe in —I wish I had given Carlos Lee third base (laugh). If I look back, ’cause strikeouts happen, errors happen, it’s easy to pinpoint a physical mistake, but had I had to do it all over again, I might have conceded third base to Carlos Lee (laugh). 

Q: How would you describe Mets fans and what they meant to you? 

A: I feel like the relationship was organic. Mets fans, good or bad, would let me know how they were feeling. And in return, I got them. I felt like I was one of them. I was one of them. I grew up a Mets fan in northern Virginia because of our Triple-A team, so I understood it. I think they appreciated effort. There’s a lot of times I didn’t appreciate the results, but I think we got each other. We had this organic connection that very few players and fan bases have. I can tell you a hundred different examples of walking down the street to get coffee in the morning before a game, and a Mets fan feeling comfortable enough coming up to me and being like, “You’re doing this wrong with your swing; you gotta do this.” I’m sitting on Second Avenue, and I have a Mets fan trying to be my batting coach on Second Avenue in front of a coffee shop. I listened. … I probably didn’t need the tidbit, but it was just that kind of back and forth in that relationship where we understood each other, we respect other, and I think we appreciated each other, and I think that’s what I’d like to see more of in baseball: the players that stick with one organization for their entire careers. I know a lot of times, it’s not possible, but I think that that’s what made the relationship so special. 

Q: How emotional do you think you’ll be [Saturday]? 

A: I hope not. I say that — and I’ve said it numerous times during this interview — I don’t think I’m an emotional person, but every time you bring up, like, “What’s the low point of this?” or “Tell me about your last game,” I was crying then, I was crying then, and it’s like, OK, maybe I am an emotional person. 

But I think it’s gonna be a weird feeling seeing my number up next to Mr. Seaver’s, and it’s gonna be a weird feeling seeing my number up next to Darryl Strawberry’s, where I used to try to emulate his swing, and seeing my number up next to Keith Hernandez’s, who during getaway days when I’d play, I’d sit in the traveling secretary’s office, and we’d dissect the game, what he saw from the booth and what I saw from third base. It’s gonna be a wildly weird feeling seeing my number next to some of my favorite players of all time up there in the rafters. 

But [I’m] incredibly honored and certainly incredibly humbled.